women, testosterone and femininity

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First of all, body hair is caused by androgens. Removing them will make a woman appear more feminine, but if a man shaves his beard, it does not make him more masculine.

Secondly, body hair on a woman is much less dense and grows slower than it would on a man, thus it's easier to remove.

First of all, a woman removing her body hair does not make her any more feminine than a man repressing his feelings makes him masculine.

Second of all, the area of two legs and two armpits is greater than the area of the lower part of a face, so it takes longer for a woman to remove her body hair than it does for a man to shave his face. Also, it depends on the person. Some women have thick, dense hair that would need to be shaved everyday, while some men can't grow beards at all.

Most men don't repress their feelings.



Again: Body hair is caused by androgens, thus it makes more sense for a woman to shave her body hair than for a man to do it. Woman with high levels of androgens have more body hair than women with low levels, which in turn means that she looks more feminine with no body hair.

A man's facial hair is much more dense and coarse than the hairs you'd normally find on a woman's legs–thus it's harder to remove.

Aren't hormones also what make women more emotional than men? Then by repressing his feelings a man is making himself more masculine. No, that's ridiculous.

It still takes longer to remove body hair than it does to remove facial hair.

Fat, soft thighs and upper arms are caused by estrogen and are therefore feminine. Why aren't they considered attractive? Zomg, society is trying to make me turn into a man.


Oh yeah, and the Beatles were really ultra-masculine...

Actually, the women rated the most attractive have much of their fat stored at their thighs and buttocks.

If a woman is morbidly obese, though, it's not caused by estrogen, but a (to put it mildly) gluttonous lifestyle.

That's a proportion, though. WHR is one thing, but I've never heard that soft, pudgy arms were a good thing. Muscular arms like Madonna, more like, and often narrow hips, even if not preferred by men, are considered superior in a social sense, more high class.
I wonder if androgyny in general isn't considered upper class, actually.

your beard was EPIC. very very cool, and it suited your activities like activism and stuff.


yes - hairy legs and armpits are signs of health and maturity on women. don't see anyone extolling the virtues of those things.


yes.


that is such an interesting perspective!


it isn't easier to remove, no. there is much more of it, it's in some awkward areas, and if ALL body hair is to be removed then it's pretty much identical to facial hair in the pubic area. some of it grows more slowly than facial hair, but that is offset by the vast area that has to be tended.


the media is still a run by men, so if you want to complain about how liberal or unmasculine it is, then take your complaints to the male stockholders and head honchos and writers and reporters (mostly male) who hold the control.


solo, i do agree that clean-shaven men are often viewed as more professional, conservative and perhaps more successful, especially in business and politics and office jobs.

i like facial hair. i like the way it looks and i like what it represents to me - a person who goes against the grain and who looks a bit free-spirited or artistic (or intellectual or old-fashioned) or even unkempt. that's just my own spin on it, though. i don't mind goatees or clean-shaven faces, of course.

Hairy legs are a sign of androgens; the less armpit and leg hair a woman has, the more feminine she will appear.



I've tried removing my armpit hair twice. Even though a man has much, much more hair below his arms than a woman does, it was still fairly easy.

I regularly shave my chest hair; that takes one to two minutes.



Chick flicks and reality shows based on conflicts and drama between people aren't written by men usually.

no, since all women have leg hair, the more she will appear like a typical female.


i don't think i mentioned just armpits lol. and a chest is still very small and easy in comparison to legs.



actually, yes they are. they are also produced and directed by men, and funded by male stockholders.

A woman with high androgen levels has more leg hair than a woman with low androgen levels, thus, shaving it off will make a woman look more feminine. All women have androgen levels, but low androgen levels are preferable to high levels.



A man usually has more hair on his chest than a woman has on her legs.




Stockholders have very little influence on scripts. The scripts (or the novels they're based on) are often written by women.

I don't get why this is relevant though, as male directors who make a movie will maintain a trend thats popular if it generated money. Indeed, many MTV hosts and most journalists for women's magazines are women.

they have a direct impact on scripts, as they can fund a movie directly.

most of the journalists in all media are male. as are the decision makers. there's no getting around that. by the way, it is men's magazines that mostly discuss men's facial hair anyway, not women's magazines.

No, they're not. There's a reason why women have far less androgens in the first place.



Again MORE androgens cause MORE hair growth--thus, shaving it would make a woman look more feminine. The very same reason can cause women with PCOS to look more hairy. Likewise, gaining muscle mass would make a man appear more masculine, even though nobody before the rise of free weights and knowledge about dieting looked like Christian Bale or Hugh Jackman.

For your information, Roman women shaved their armpits and their legs. The correlation between femininity and hairlessness was known even back then.



Androgen sensitivity is related to heredity, but much less so than in men. The androgen levels found in most women are too low to give her a thick, masculine hair growth, even in androgen sensitive areas. You'll never see a woman with high estrogen levels with lots of chest hair and the opportunity to grow a mustache.

Edit: Androgen sensitivity in areas such as ankles, armpits and pubic region vary very little. Most of the variation is in the face, chest, abdomen, thighs, upper arms and back.

http://www.hirsutism.com/hirsutism-biol ... owth.shtml
http://www.livestrong.com/article/21412 ... n-females/



... And some women only have hair on their ankles. Differences in chest hair are caused by ethnicity, but you'll still never see an Arab men with low testosterone levels who can grow a lot of chest hair.



Most do not, as this would be a very high risk. Movies are primarily funded (apart from the customers) by government support (at least in Europe) and product placements.



Pretty much any journalist who automatically deem a male actor as ugly after he grows a beard is a woman.

yes, they are. if we did not have them we would not develop properly. simply because we have less of them doesn't mean they are not extraordinarily important for the proper functioning of our bodies. they are part of our own uniquely balanced mix of hormones.


PCOS is by definition an abnormal condition. women with normal levels of androgens have a wide variety of levels of body hair, due to heredity.

your claim would be similar to saying that all tall people look healthier because some short people suffered from malnutrition as children. various level of nutrition doesn't account for the vast differences in body height across a population. similarly, in a population of woman of normal health, they usually have varying levels of body hair.

unless of course, you think that a large number of native north american women (who tend to have less body hair) have lower levels of testosterone by default because they are less hairy than other women.

your point does not hold water except when looking at ABNORMAL levels of hormones.


no, it wasn't "known", it was a unique cultural ideal. for YOUR information, MEN also shaved all of their body hair off. for the record, beards were also not popular with the Romans until later days.


and... you just proved my point. well done. you are not talking about normal levels of testosterone. you are speaking of abnormal levels.

women with normal levels of sex hormones will have some body hair, and they are no less feminine because that is their natural state. perhaps your thoughts are the product of cultural conditioning, where you try to attribute modern beauty ideals to your own preferences (that came about as a result of social pressures).


yes, you can and will see such a person. there are ethnic variations, and hormones do not rule our bodies to that degree.

women still have a much larger area to shave (in order to find with the current cultural expectations). most men do not shave their chests, but most women do shave their legs.


not in north america, which has a much larger film industry.


you'll need to back that up with an actual comparison of data, because it looks like you are making things up.

it is a discussion stemming from the OP's argument that hair on men is supposed to be considered sexy, and him seeking reasons why it isn't. it's directly on topic, in case you were worried.

ok, since telling a mod they are derrailing a thread is aparently derailing then i re raise my previous point. Both of you are arguing natural chemicals are influencing hair growth, which is completely true as anyone can say, but ive yet to see more than "certain papers say" Out of either of you. Hell, a chemical biology class alone would make this more believable. But at the end of the day the complexity of hormones is such that first of all there isnt a specific target of what is normal, as they vary from person to person and even vary by cycles in an individual and also by age and their nutrition/activity levels. Without that information any claim that either side makes is nullified.